By Starly Richards,
Staff Writer.
The Oscars are right around the corner, meaning that the winners of the 97th Oscars are set to be announced on March 2, 2025. The nominations for actress in a lead role, actress in a supporting role and best musical/comedy all have two nominees in common: Wicked and Emelia Pérez. Emelia Pérez is predicted to win all of them.
The main problem with that statement is that Emelia Pérez simply isn’t good. It’s not horrible per se, but it is certainly not deserving of any kind of award recognizing cinematic excellence. Especially not when compared to the box office phenomenon that was Wicked.
Sophomore Lena Meline watched both movie-musicals and stated, “As far as musicals go, Emelia Pérez is kinda the worst you can get.” It serves as a decent movie but totally lacks the musical component. “I think it’s abysmal that they are nominated in the same categories because they are so drastically different,” Meline added.
The musical Wicked, of which the movie was an adaptation, was drawn directly from the book Wicked (1995), which was a spinoff of The Wizard of Oz. The musical hit the stage in 2003 and has been beloved by the masses ever since, with every iteration of the song “Popular” being stuck in people’s heads before they even heard of the musical.
The 2024 movie-musical adaptation, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, was beautifully composed and used all raw vocals to tell a story of prejudice, toleration and corruption, which relates very closely to the real world today. The themes explored by the show are up for interpretation but can be easily used as a metaphor for racism, homophobia and politics.
Emelia Pérez, on the other hand, is a “musical/comedy” with no standing history and shot itself in the foot as soon as it was released. The plot is inconsistent, the score is barely audible or just poorly composed behind the songs, and the lead actress’s voice was improved with an AI program known as Respeecher.
Meline said, “There’s hardly any rhythm to the songs. They feel really, like, disjointed and weird.” It is undeniable that the songs are poorly written, conducted and executed. The disparity is reflected throughout the rest of the film, from its inconsistent narrative to its dreadful theatrics.
There was no meaning behind Emelia Pérez. The only hint of a message was “trans lives matter,” but they disprove that by making the transgender character an evil crime boss who kidnaps the supporting lead at the beginning of the movie and forces her to help with her transition.
The movie also does a subpar job at representing the entire concept of itself. “The director is a French man who did no prior research on Hispanic people or trans people; you can tell there is a lack of care put into it,” shared Meline. Throughout the movie, characters slipped in and out of culturally based accents and languages with zero consistency or reason.
The movie was very clearly solely made for the sake of being as “diverse” as possible to win pity points at the Oscars. Meline pointed out, “Wicked actually does a good job at uplifting minorities’ voices.” The winner should be very obvious, but apparently it is not.
